


hey mr. stargazer

by Goldmonger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dean Winchester Has Anger Issues, Gen, Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22993957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: They made it six days into their impromptu vacation before Dean launched himself to his feet, shook his head like a dog, and told Sam to punch him in the face.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 42





	hey mr. stargazer

**Author's Note:**

> * Title taken from the song ['Straight Razor'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsXK2VSZCvE) by Matt Maeson, which is honestly the most Dean Winchester song to exist outside of 'Ramble On'.
> 
> * Story set between 10x03 and 10x04.

They made it six days into their impromptu vacation before Dean launched himself to his feet, shook his head like a dog, and told Sam to punch him in the face.

Sam, who was three beers deep and halfway through a battered John le Carré paperback, blinked up at him.

“What?”

“Hit me. Come on.”

Twilight was descending rapidly, and the temperature with it. Most of the holidaymakers that swarmed Milford Lake’s shores during the day had retired to their trailers or cars, driven away by the dwindling heat and encroaching shadows. For Dean, the promise of night meant possibility, and crucially, freedom of movement.

“I said hit me. There’s no-one around and I can feel myself growing a gut, man, I need to dance around the ring a little.”

Sam placed his novel face down on the grass to mark his page, then rolled his shoulders, wincing at the resulting crackle of stiff bones and jostled muscle, still tender. He crossed his legs on the picnic blanket and hunched his back slightly as he looked up, like he was at summer camp, waiting for Dean to deliver a lecture on kayak safety. Dean had to remind himself not to snap, raise his voice, even inch forward without warning, though the open curiosity grated. He was himself again, after all.

“I’m serious,” he said, fingers inadvertently twitching, a strange buzzing just beneath his skin. “Let’s go.”

“Dean, we came here to rest.”

“We’ve been resting,” he said impatiently. “I need some exercise.”

Sam sighed, gaze drawn to the water, which lapped slate-grey upon the gravel of the embankment barely ten feet from them. The wisps of pale cloud that had sailed innocuously across the sky earlier had gained mass and definition, sinking with the sun; It was now almost overcast, the light dimming to a gloom that rendered Sam in a daguerreotype, distant and faded. He was about to say something damning, Dean could tell – some invite to a sharing circle that he wouldn’t be able to refuse, because if he did then he’d be admitting to a problem. Which he didn’t have, unless you counted the ugly scar on the inside of his forearm, and Dean tried very hard not to.

“Just a quick spar –,”

“Are you kidding?” Sam’s back was still bowed, hair swaying in the faint breeze that was picking up, cool and brisk. “My shoulder is busted, and if that wasn’t enough, you’re –,”

“What?” Dean was pacing now, kicking up wads of earth in tiny, vindictive spasms. “I’m what?”

“Acting weird,” said Sam wearily, watching his progress and regression, as dependable as the tides.

Dean rolled his eyes and settled into a ready stance, feet staggered and apart with his centre of gravity shifted low. Slipping into the position was like trying on his dad’s old leather jacket, summoning memories of strained hamstrings, bloodied knuckles, and a bourbon-soaked voice barking at him to correct his posture. It made him want to strike out, cobra-quick, his energy replenished by the violence much like it was sustained by rare smiles, and a rough hand squeezing his shoulder in pride. He could get back to that shape, wiry and loose, efficient and clinical when he swung, stabbed, sawed, shot. He was a soldier trained by a soldier. All he needed was to smother the wild animal, to shave off the rind of demonic filth that weighted his fist and sought to create meat out of living things.

“It’s this or I find some guy in a bar to beat to shit,” he said, quelling the guilt that surged when Sam started kneading his brow, the lines there permanent imprints from a long and difficult decade. There was a new furrow, he thought, pressed into being beneath red light and a deadly pursuit. It was proof of the kind of painful exhaustion that only he and the Devil had managed to make permanent within his brother.

He watched as Sam’s resolve dissipated, never exactly corporeal when it came to Dean in any case, and he hauled himself up with a grunt, most of him crumpled with worry.

“Just sparring, Dean, I’m serious –,”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Dean, practically vibrating, both the unstoppable force and the immovable object. Sam’s bum arm was a rock in the road, but they’d trained with worse before. He recalled target practise with a broken leg, walking a dozen miles after climbing out of his own grave, and perfecting his right hook in the wake of a car collision that took his father. They’d always had worse.

Sam mirrored his pose, but rigidly, not bouncing on the balls of his feet the way they were taught. _Float like a butterfly, Sammy, don’t let him get you._

They stayed that way for a beat too long, never crossing the line into the other’s court. Dean could feel the thirst for it arresting his breath like a panic attack, but he couldn’t throw the first punch, couldn’t seem to shake the memory of Sam dropping the knife in the bunker and the atavistic pleasure it incited, the kind only a sated predator could know –

His head snapped back with the force of a well-placed jab, his jaw throbbing to the rhythm of his pulse as he righted himself. Sam was back in position, more fauna than flora now as he started to move with the flow of the spar, Dean locked in his sights.

“You’ve been working on that.”

“I had to get ambidextrous at kicking demon ass,” said Sam, his flicker of amusement sputtering out too soon, like a weak flame. “The skills you pick up on the job, I guess.”

Dean’s attempt at a grin stretched his aching jaw, so he retaliated with a series of chops that would have been layups for Sam to block months ago, when they were both brimming full of resentment and rage. In the flooding dark and rising mist of an inky lakeside, tip-toeing around one another in everything, knocking Dean’s blows to the side proved to be more of a workout. Dean pressed forward with strikes intended for the face, throat, ribs and abdomen, layering them faster as his veins coursed fire, every nerve igniting with the sparsest release of restrained fury. It was Cain’s influence, he knew, urging him to reinforce his advantage until his opponent was worn out and prone to fatal mistakes; it screamed at him to duck under a rookie sweeping motion that inevitably went wide, a gaping opportunity for a puncture and bleed, a slam and break. Every inch of anatomy was just pulp that didn’t know it yet, and Dean could deliver that news.

Sam was sweating profusely as they fought on, hair caught in winding coils on his neck and temples as he was pushed further and further back. Blooms of colour were forming where Dean’s hits had infiltrated his defences, harsh against ghost-pale skin, prompting winces when he was made to manoeuvre unexpectedly. He skidded on the dew-sodden grass at one point, and Dean had to tense his muscles to a near agonising degree to stymie the instinct to lunge and consume, his momentary hesitation giving Sam the chance to aim a kick at his knee. Dean angled it away in time, but he noted the way it made Sam stagger, how he had put his whole, beaten body into it.

“All good?” he asked, panting.

“Golden,” Sam replied, flushed and dripping, favouring his right arm a little more than usual. His eyes were bright in the evening light, as though in the throes of a fever, and he continued to let Dean advance with impunity, never shoving back. Dean wondered how he must look, his own sweat cooling to meltwater where it suffused his shirt and trickled from his spiked hair, shorn back to military standard. His heart thudded like rapid footfalls, chasing him away from sense and into more action, like the endless forward momentum of a shark.

“Dean –,”

There was a meditative quality to it, the thrusting and clash of bone to flesh, the impact that could at any moment split him into shards. It was a startling downgrade from the strength he’d wielded as a demon, pulverising hordes of men to prove he matched them tenfold, sometimes specifically because Crowley told him not to. It had been fun, to say the least, poking and prodding Crowley’s patience until it transmogrified into flat-out disgust. He remembered drinking with the demon king, conning and fighting and torturing with him like a funhouse refraction of hunting with his brother, and he decided the human setbacks were blessings, in fact. He would trade all the strength in the world to be back to his battered, bitter self. To be able to die.

“Dean, stop –,”

His limbs were on autopilot, tilting at windmills in the bare hope that the blades would cut him to pieces. He could go faster, harder, he thought, could intensify it so that Sam would aim his next kick better, and follow through with a tackle that would give him the upper hand in the spar. He knew Sam had a knife strapped to his ankle, another Swiss army relic closed in his pocket – the pair of them made it a habit to retain their weapons, even in the boonies, dipping their guard but never dropping it completely. He could finish it so easily, so cleanly.

“Dean!”

He faltered, that particular intonation of his name as old as his consciousness and as good as a manual override for it.

“Dean, I’m going to –,”

It was too late, but he stumbled to a halt past the edge of the gritty shoreline anyway, his shoes filled with water and his jeans wet to the shins. He reached out, but it was sluggish, his arms too heavy. Sam was falling backwards in slow motion, in an almost graceful arc that culminated in a massive, devastating splash.

“ _Shit_ ,” he said, because otherwise he would have laughed, and he couldn’t when Sam was having trouble getting his head above the surface. He kept putting pressure on his arm and immediately regretting it, falling back under to garbled profanity. Dean leaned over and snagged the lapels of his jacket, hauling him, spluttering, back into open air.

“Seriously?” he gasped, trying and failing to push Dean off as he was pulled, shuddering, to his feet. “I t-told you to st-stop, what were you going to d-do, d-drown me?”

Dean’s mouth opened and closed, words dying, rotting and deliquescing on his tongue. He focused on depositing Sam on relatively dry land and draping him in the picnic blanket, which was itself getting too damp and cold to be of much use. His own jacket was leaking streams of water, goosebumps puckering his skin where the wind gusted. It was the chill, he insisted to himself. It was the abrupt reminder of extended summer nights giving way to a frigid October, nothing more.

The chattering of Sam’s teeth shook him back into the present, a frisson of fear drawing his voice out of the depths of one of his unintelligible, unhappy growls.

“You’ll freeze out here. Let’s get back to the car.”

“Gr-great idea,” said Sam irritably, fumbling his way to his feet and ignoring Dean’s attempts to help. Dean’s arm hovered behind him for the short trip back to the Impala anyway, as he studied the ground and nursed the sickly sensation that he was hurting his own case for sanity without even trying.

The ride back to the motel was silent but for the rushing of the air conditioner, Sam’s trembling eventually diminishing to the occasional shiver. He got out of the car and into the motel room under his own power, leaving Dean to sit in the car for several taut minutes in which he had to remove his bloodless fingers from the steering wheel one by one. They were clenched so tight that it smarted to curl them towards his palms, the knucklebones stark where they pushed up under bruises darker than the sky.

The shower was still going when he let himself into the room, absently annoyed that Sam had left it unlocked. There were all sorts of freaks out there. Even the damn salt line at the threshold was broken. Dean stared down at the scattered grains, the crystalline fractals dull in the anaemic fluorescent lighting. He had crossed it successfully. He was human, then. A marked man, but a man all the same, and men made mistakes. It didn’t mean they were evil.

Right?

“Dean?”

Manual override. He looked up to see Sam idling by the bathroom door in sweats and one of their old t-shirts, his hair still wet but steaming this time, the scent of cheap shampoo trailing him out. He was frowning again, concern aging his already old eyes. “Dean, where did you go?”

“Nowhere,” he said. “Sorry.” He gestured to Sam’s shiners, which were mild enough, but still a product of Dean’s not inconsiderable efforts. That alone made them seem nastier than the work of some random demon. “That – that shouldn’t have happened. I went too far.”

Apologies tasted strange to him, and came out odd, gruff like his father telling him he’d thought he’d be back in one week, not six. Proclamations like that had never meant anything. Their dad would take off again, for longer the next time, until the contrition disappeared and it became the new normal. Dean didn’t want that to happen to Sam’s wounds, for his pain to become the toll they had to pay for Dean to feel better. He had the sneaking suspicion he’d allowed that before. Too often.

“It’s fine,” said Sam, which was par for the course, and then – “actually, no it’s not,” – which wasn’t, not yet. “What the hell was that?”

“Residuals from being a demonic piece of crap,” Dean said acidly, because it could have been true, and might make him sound like he wasn’t going totally crazy. He shrugged out of his jacket, slumping at the end of his bed and lying back. The ugly popcorn ceiling fizzled to snow as his attention drifted, though he knew sleep was a long way off. This was more like unmooring himself, flying somewhere empty and airless where there was no-one to kill.

“That’s not how the cure works. You’re not a demon anymore.” Sam, of course, brought him back, lurking in his periphery as he perched on the other bed. “Do you… I mean, do you feel better now?”

“Very much not,” he said, his honesty surprising him probably as much as it did Sam, who remained quiet for another steady intake of breath.

“So not just an exercise thing, huh.”

“Nope.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

He could hear the rustle of Sam’s clothes and bedsheets as he got up and dithered, pretending to perform night-time rituals in lieu of pressing the issue, or really letting it go. They were both terrible at discerning whether the former or the latter suited the situation at hand, as proven by their present pointless injuries.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Dean said, with the goal of dispelling the uncomfortable atmosphere. The ceiling swirled in a blizzard, the kind that buries towns.

When Sam didn’t respond, he heaved himself up on his elbows. Sam was sorting through the detritus at the bottom of his duffle bag, firmly not meeting Dean’s gaze. After a gravid pause he stopped and rubbed his forehead, his worrier’s lines.

“I know it’s not your fault, Dean,” he said tiredly. “I know you’re going through something brand new on the gamut of fucked up stuff we have to confront every other day. But you can’t take it out on me, okay? Or anyone, for that matter. You have to let me help you.”

He was gripping a dog-eared paperback as he spoke, one of the cherished books Sam owned that didn’t contain supernatural lore, or records by the Men of Letters. He’d left one of them to be saturated by lake water, Dean realised, Sam’s vacation read ruined by his brilliant plan to pummel one another.

Nausea swirled, putrid, like greasy black smoke that itched to leave its vessel. It would be easy, he thought, to accept the offer, the buoy that would keep him level for a while – a long while, even, if he worked on keeping a lid on his anger and the nameless spirit that Cain had pumped into him like a toxin. He could try, for Sam. Confess the terror that trapped him in the haze of sleep, the memories of death and hell and failure that didn’t smother the spirit so much as send it into a frenzy when he killed, monstrous or not.

But it would be temporary. The buoy would deflate, at some stage. He would still be rotting inside, the living dead – just like his hateful ancestor.

Sam would take the collateral damage, if he let him. He’d rot right alongside him and think it his duty, as a brother. Dean soberly thought it was fortunate that Dean knew his own duty, and that he’d clung to it through everything.

“I know, Sammy,” he said gently. “I haven’t been dealing with this demon crap well. But I’m gonna get a handle on it, all right? I swear. I’ll get myself in line.”

Sam wanted to bring up the Mark. Dean could tell by the jump in his jaw and the scowl that he tried to hide, by the stiffness in the muscles that had been trimmed down during Dean’s absence to a leanness that was almost unhealthy. His brother would wait him out, Dean knew, would persist even if he lied and obfuscated, even if what waited at the end of his faith was just another compulsive murderer. He made a pact with himself that it wouldn’t come to that. There was no way Sam was paying the price for this curse.

“You better change,” Sam said shortly, as he tore back the duvet of his bed and retrieved his laptop from the adjacent cabinet. “I’m not going to put up with you if you get pneumonia as well.”

“Yeah, you will,” Dean muttered, earning him a balled-up sock to the head.

He might be a time bomb, he thought, as he wiped condensation from the bathroom mirror and appraised the wreck within. But he had control over the explosion, the time of detonation and the radius of destruction. He wasn’t Cain, or a demon, or a monster. He knew when to stop.

Right?

**Author's Note:**

> * happy belated birthday mr. ackles! let's take those boys home :')


End file.
